Tag Archives: mental health

The Top 10 Gadgets designed to boost your mental + physical well-being & stay your healthiest self during a pandemic!

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Taking care of our health and well-being, when there’s a literal global pandemic shaking up the world, can be hard. I mean there are bigger issues than the plate of fries I had for dinner last night, or the fact that my sleep cycle is a mess. Right? Wrong! Paying close attention to, and focusing on our mental and physical well-being has never been more integral. And we don’t just mean hitting the gym, or going for your morning run, maintaining well-being goes beyond simple physical fitness. Keeping our stress levels in check, ensuring we get a good night’s sleep, knowing when to disconnect off social media, and give our eyes and mind a rest – these are all important habits in ensuring we stay our healthiest version. And, we’ve curated a collection of handy gadgets that promise to help you achieve all your mental and physical health goals! From a brain training headset that improves your mental health and performance to a fitness-tracking toe ring that may be the coolest wearable we’ve seen in a while – these innovative gadgets are perfect for health-conscious individuals out there who want to stay their fittest selves during this pandemic!

Designed by the students of the Hongik University, the Traverse is a conceptual drone powered by AI that’s designed to be a personal trainer for recreational runners. The autonomous drone comes with a quad-propeller layout, and also features multiple fish-eye cameras that help it navigate through spaces without requiring any external controls. A main gimbal-mounted camera focuses on you, the runner, and the camera focuses on you as you run, monitoring your speed, performance, technique, laps, and charts your overall progress. While running, Traverse takes photos and videos of runners to give them Form correction & visual running feedback by tracking their posture with deep learning.

Designed to be ‘gym equipment for your mind, Mendi lets you train your brain and even measure its progress along the way. This can help you be more mindful, beat stress, improve your mental and physical performance at work or while playing a sport, and even help overcome learning difficulties. Mendi sits on your head, like a slim innocuous headband, but underneath its sleek exterior, it holds a myriad of sensors that measure brain activity, blood flow, and oxygenation of your prefrontal cortex. Paired with an app that lets you go through brain exercises, Mendi tracks your brain’s activity while the app pushes you to use your mind more through a series of focus-building games. At the end of a 10-minute session, the app lets you know how much energy your brain expended, what progress you made, and where you’re currently at

The Halo Band will cost $99.99 and the service (which is required for Halo’s more advanced features) costs $3.99 per month. Health and wellness are one of the few industries still thriving in unprecedented times because physical and mental well-being is of utmost priority for everyone right now. Halo’s most exclusive feature is the fact that it creates a 3D model of your body and tracks the emotional tone in your voice for an even more personalized wellness journey. Technology with EQ (emotional quotient) capabilities are rare and mostly seen in experimental robots. Another thing that sets it apart from others in the market is that it doesn’t have a screen which indicates that Amazon wants to focus less on sports and more on lifestyle changes.

Built for Titan, a prominent watch and jewelry brand in the country, the rings come with a metallic finish and sit inside one of two sleek, matte black cases – for charging at home and for charging while traveling. Originally toe-rings in the Indian culture come made from silver, which absorbs positive energy from the ground you walk on. The Mettis, however, use sensors that help monitor your health. Whether you’re walking, running, exercising, or even swimming, the rings capture your body temperature and your heart rate, working just like smartwatches and fitness wearables do. The rings actively track your location, count your steps, monitor sleep patterns, as well as help you keep track of your period cycles… all while strongly echoing the cultural relevance of toe-worn jewelry in Indian customs and traditions.

lamp

This lamp was made so that you could associate it with more than just an illumination source, the designer wants you to look at this lamp as an appliance that can help you establish a healthy sleeping pattern along with its core function. There are recommended light levels for different pre-bedtime activities like watching TV, reading, meditating, etc. and you can adjust the lightness/darkness for them through this lamp so it helps you wind down easily and amplifies the impact of your bedtime routine. You can set a timer for when you want the light to go off and it will gradually decrease till shutdown time so the darkness is not abrupt – another small detail to get your circadian rhythm on track! The lamp is flexible so it can be used during the day as well like a desk lamp and the minimal design makes it a perfect fit for any interior style, especially a small space.

Rui Sun’s Emotional First Aid Kit comes with five products. The Indigo Third Eyeglasses are a pair of playful kaleidoscope glasses that let you look at things differently, bringing a sense of wonderment and a different perspective on life as you see it. The Purple Breathing Mask is an instant de-stressor. Equipped with the scent of violets, breathing through the mask brings the calming effects of breathing into a paper bag with the additional advantages of aromatherapy. The Blue stress buster is a megaphone that visualizes sound in blue ink. Screaming into it not only helps you release pent-up anger but also helps create art out of it. The Green Mediating Stethoscope comes in pairs, allowing two people who’ve just had an argument to listen to each other’s heartbeats. It puts the argument into perspective, reminding you of the emotional aftermath of such fights. Listening to a beating heart also helps you calm down. Lastly, the Yellow Confidence Booster is a super-light padded jacket that when worn, gives you the feeling of being in a secure safe shell, and also having a puffed chest (a sign of confidence). It helps people with low self-esteem to feel secure and more confident in solving dilemmas or addressing uncomfortable situations.

Industrial designer SangWoon Kim has reimagined the traditional waist support belt as a smart wearable to protect the lumbar spine better. Basically, it functions like any standard belt to compress the waist and isolate our breathing patterns. The striking difference is the ability to tighten the belt automatically, depending on the intensity of the workout and the user’s breathing pattern. Kim calls it the BIND.CO belt and this workout accessory come in handy for any exercise mode and intensity. The innovation will be godsent for beginners who are still learning about the exact tightening of the belt needed for their workout. Thanks to the embedded sensors, the smart belt tightens during exercise and loosens at the time of rest between activities.

Happy Ears earplugs debuted in 2015, going on to becoming a favorite of users as well as organizations and events like SXSW and Lollapalooza. The earplugs helped people to sleep peacefully, work quietly, attend concerts “responsibly” and simply help people avoid hearing loss in the long term from being in high-decibel environments. Happy Ears came with a sleek, oval design that could easily fit snugly in each ear, with a barely noticeable stem that didn’t obstruct your sleep or movement in any way. Now they’re back in their same, slim, reusable avatar, albeit with one small, significant upgrade… they’re made entirely out of recycled plastics that help reduce ocean pollution as well as noise pollution! The ‘Happy Ears Recycled’ aims at tackling the waste created by the 1 billion single-use earplugs that are worn and discarded as trash each year. Made from FDA-approved 100 % recycled ABS and TPE plastics, Happy Ears help take plastics out of our oceans and are designed to be worn multiple times for years, preventing any reentry of plastic into our natural ecosystems.

Devices like the Awair air quality tracker are here to make our homes a little more pure and safe. We may not know this but, indoor air can be 5x more polluted than outside as we are constantly exposed to factors like paint, furniture, carpet, air fresheners, toys, and more. The air quality can have a major influence on allergies, asthma, focus, sleep quality, skin health, and overall well-being apart from just physical health. The Awair 2nd-edition air quality monitor can track it all for you and even give you personalized recommendations to improve the air in your space. The smart device records the 5 most important factors that affect your health like fine dust, chemicals, CO2, humidity, and temperature to give you a report straight on your phone with changes we can make to up the quality.

The Loftie’s feature list is simple. It comes with a clock face (which dims at night so you’re not distracted), a nightlight that you can switch on or off with the push of a single button, and the ability to choose from a variety of soothing playlists to put you to sleep. If you rely on a noise machine to go to bed, Loftie comes with all the noise types, from white noise to pink noise (yes, that’s a thing), as well as soothing soundscapes like forest noises or a crackling fireplace. The audio lulls you into a calming slumber, and when it’s time to wake up, Loftie’s two-part alarm system wakes you without startling you out of your sleep. The first round of the alarm plays a soft melody to partially wake you, while round two aims at fully awakening your senses with a cheerful tune that sets the right tone for the rest of your day.

This Nike-inspired fidget tool + massager is a stress-relief EDC for pro footballers

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Football players are shaped to be performance-oriented, however not much is spoken about the toll taken on their mental health; a designer believes a fidget-like device with a massage feature may do the trick.

Fear and anxiety hound us everywhere. Whether on the field, in the classroom, or at a party with friends; you name a situation and you’ll find anxiety is shadowing you. For sportsmen, anxiety is a part of the game, with each player having their own little ritual to help them focus – we have heard about players considering throwing up good luck to even the lucky jersey, personal battles to mitigate stress are fought by everyone.

According to data shared by Professional Footballers’ Association, a huge number of players are now seeking help for mental health issues ranging from performance, competition, to acceptance. Since there is no existing product that addresses the issues governing mental health directly, Breathe, is a device designed specifically to help footballers prevent anxiety.

The handy gadget designed by Varun Anand is a fidget EDC/tool that uses buttons. The oval plastic body features soft foam material on the underside which mimics the shiatsu massage technique. The entire device works as a solution to help the user stay calm and relaxed pre and post-game, improving the player’s overall performance.

Inspired by Nike’s design language and branding, the Breathe also calms the user by delivering positive messages and storing peppermint gums within its cavity. The anxiety kit uses stimuli such as texture, feel, touch and feedback to reduce anxiety and stress, allowing players to focus. Breathe fits ergonomically in the hand and is attached to an anti-slip strap, so a footballer can use it during practice and is easier to store when not in use!

Designer: Varun Anand

This public horticultural pod cultivates plants and multi-generational relationships through the act of gardening!

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The act of gardening provides many proven physical and mental health benefits that alone make cultivating your own garden worth it. Taking it one step further, community gardens carry the same benefits and then some. Interacting with members of your own community while growing plant life, crops, and flowers not only makes fresh food available for all of those who help cultivate it but also brings people closer together in the process. Enrich Group, a team of designers with Virginia Tech University, created their own community greenhouse to help forge human connections and bridge generational gaps within the community.

Gardening promotes many physical and mental health benefits, including an increase in physical activity, relaxation, and access to fresh food. Enrich Group aimed to combine physical activity and mental relaxation with an environment that cultivates multi-generational relationships with their community greenhouse. Following a year of social isolation, Enrich Group built their own community greenhouse because they believe age is nothing but a number and doesn’t change each aging individual’s desire to connect and build meaningful relationships within their own community. Cultivating genuine relationships between people from different generations through the act of gardening is the “embodiment of purposeful living,” notes Enrich Group, ensuring that “we all have the chance to grow, together.”

The greenhouse’s interior is designed to feel similar to traditional meeting spaces, with an island or table in its center that contains the garden’s main communal herb garden. The main island is also multi-tiered to optimize the greenhouse’s interior space. Hanging plant fixtures form an outer ring above the island’s main communal herb plot. In addition to the plants’ tub, gardening spaces around the pod’s perimeter feature health monitors for each plant, sliding storage bins with open handles for easy accessibility, as well as a general working space. The greenhouse appears as an approachable, modern, and public hub with glass-coated acrylic panels, aluminum ribbing, and a wooden entryway.

Designer: Enrich Group

Enrich Group’s community garden, called Enrich features an exterior design close enough to traditional greenhouses to fit any outdoor space.

Inside, community members can develop interpersonal relationships as well as grow crops.

Enrich wears an approachable design, inviting community members to come inside and tend to the garden.

Around the perimeter of the gardening hub, plant pots and tubs can be found alongside workspaces and sliding drawers.

In the center of each pod, a communal herb plot creates more space for gardening.

Before tending to your own plot, Enrich provides a preliminary survey that reveals what type of gardener you are.

The location of your garden can be chosen according to your community of residence.

Gardeners can also select what types of crops they’d prefer to grow.

At its core, Enrich operates as a social hub for multi-generational relationships to thrive.

This wearable + eye tracking medical device helps patients in the ICU communicate their needs for real-time medical treatment!

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The stress and impact that ICUs can have on the mental health of patients typically result in prolonged hospital stays. Troubling cycles typically ensue as soon as patients experience trauma either before entering the ICU or while they’re being treated. The trauma is usually born from the lack of communication between the patient and medical personnel or general miscommunication. Acknowledging the mental stressors within the ICU, a team of designers created SOVA, an ICU medical aid device that tracks the patient’s health progress and allows the patient to communicate their needs by simply directing their eyes.

Either before, during, or following their visit to the ICU, almost half of the patients who receive medical treatment experience some form of trauma or suffer from mental stressors that make it difficult to communicate their needs. SOVA is a medical device that tracks and registers early signs of physical or mental pain so that medical personnel within the ICU can provide the patient with proper treatment. While physical pain, insomnia, and anxiety are only a few of the stressors in the ICU, SOVA operates as a system to track these stressors for real-time support and treatment.

Comprising three main components, SOVA comes equipped with a doctor’s interface, a patient’s interface, and sensors for the patient to wear and for their interface to register. The sensors work to monitor the patient’s brain activity and sleep patterns, while an integrated camera in the patient’s interface surveils their hospital room. Through integrated eye-tracking software, SOVA allows patients to answer health-related questions and communicate their needs, which ends up displayed on their doctor’s interface. This seamless train of communication allows medical staff to act quickly and help patients out of discomfort and pain, shortening their overall stay.

Designers: Mehmet Mehmetalioglu, Mihkel Güsson, Fabian Böttcher

A curved display screen enhances SOVA’s ergonomic appeal.

The 360° arm structure allows SOVA to turn and meet the patient where they rest. 

An integrated camera tracks the visual progress of patients in the ICU.

SOVA comes equipped with speakers and easy-to-grip sides for optimal usability.









Similar to the notifications we’re used to seeing on our smartphones, SOVA sends alerts to the patients that range from future visits to health progress statistics.

Each SOVA unit also comes with a locking feature that keeps the device from turning or unhinging from its position.

Each patient also wears a sensor that tracks brain activity as well as sleeping habits.

The medical staff’s interface receives all communication from the patient’s interface for real-time support and medical treatment.

Fitbit and Deepak Chopra launch ‘Mindful Method’ mental health series

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After the year we've had, it can be all too easy to feel emotionally and mentally overwhelmed. Thankfully, there has been growing awareness in the tech industry that our mental health contributes to our overall wellbeing as well. Fitbit was one o...

This wall-mounted desk holds a terrarium to improve your mental health while working from home

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Even before stay-at-home orders were put in place, my green thumb was itching, but living in a small apartment doesn’t seem to get me close enough to scratch it. So I buy flower bouquets and ivy house plants to get a little taste of what it might feel like to have a garden. There’s no denying that my plants give me a sense of calm when I work next to them. With the double whammy of the quarantine forcing us to work from home, along with the onslaught of snow with winter, some calm is much needed for all of us. Mental health is known to improve when a little bit of nature is brought indoors, which represents a core logic of biophilic design. Showcasing his own biophilic design, Jake Round recently debuted visuals for Terrarium Desk, a wall-mounted desktop that integrates a removable plant terrarium, providing a mental respite for those of us in need.

While Terrarium Desk was initially designed in order to help mitigate the mental stressors that come along with both the colder seasons and working from home in the year 2020, the desk’s compact nature might also feel inviting for city-dwellers. In other words, my wall of dried flowers might be moving out sooner than expected. Round’s design is wall-mountable and incorporates plenty of storage space for clutter that would otherwise claim space on our desktops – laptops, tablets, magazines, books, the works. At the desk’s focal point, Round placed his glass terrarium, which includes a warm light for cozy night viewings or brighter workspaces during the day. While the light can be dimmed, the terrarium itself is always in sight, whether the desk is opened or closed.

When closed, the desk’s minimal front face hinges at and displays the plant life inside the terrarium. When opened, the desk’s terrarium promotes your focus by stimulating brain function and emitting oxygen as well as positive carbons. What’s to gain from caring for houseplants might appear as just a list of temporary relievers, but they each hold their own weight. While the list of mental health benefits is short and more attainable when put to practice, the peace that comes with it could stay awhile.

Designer: Jake Round

AI gauges the mental health of cancer patients through eye movements

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Good mental health is important, and early research suggests AI might help diagnose that health for people who are under a particularly heavy strain. Scientists have developed a combination of deep learning algorithms that use eye tracking to gauge t...

‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ may actually be good for you

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If you’re one of the many gamers who has plowed hundreds of hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons this year, that could have made a positive impact on your well-being. Oxford University researchers used data from the Nintendo Switch smash hit and...